John Boehner on the hunt for D.C. cash
By: Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman August 28, 2013 12:47 PM EST

House Speaker John Boehner is trying to squeeze even more money out of Washington.

The Ohio Republican’s latest fundraising effort, called Capitol Program by his team, is meant to coax D.C. insiders to write $10,000 checks to the speaker’s political organization.

Many of the donors targeted work for companies and trade associations that already cut Boehner five-figure checks through their political action committees. Boehner’s team is urging the senior-level employees to give him big bucks out of their own pockets as well.

“We’re always looking for new ways to engage supporters in our efforts to create jobs and growth for the American people,” said Cory Fritz, a spokesman for Team Boehner, the speaker’s umbrella political organization.

The Capitol Program kicks off in earnest on Sept. 29, where the speaker will hold a two-day donor retreat at the newly opened Salamander Resort & Spa in Middleburg, Va.

Spearheading the effort are K Street veterans like Dirk Van Dongen of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, Brian McCormack of Edison Electric Institute and Mark Isakowitz of Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock.

“There’s a certain amount of money that is obvious in terms of source, but when you begin to think of submarkets, if you will, you try and create an affinity of those submarkets,” one veteran Republican fundraiser said. “This one is designed to do that with individuals who have the financial capacity to contribute, whether it’s lobbyists, trade association types or others.”

The new Capitol Program is an attempt to draw on Boehner’s relationships in Washington and capitalize on the fact that fundraising for the 2016 presidential election is completely dormant.

The effort to ask K Streeters to pony up personal money comes amid chatter about Boehner’s future in public office. He’s been speaker for three years and in Congress for 22 years, and many wonder when he’ll call it quits. His aides and allies consistently try to quash such talk.

Raising money is nothing new for Boehner — he has long been one of Congress’s most prodigious fundraisers. In the first seven months of this year, the speaker’s committees had raised more than $12 million, with 90 percent coming from contributions of $1,000 or less, according to an Boehner aide. Boehner has raised more than $30 million for members, candidates, the National Republican Congressional Committee, Ohio Republican Party and the Republican National Committee in that time frame. Last cycle, Boehner raised more than $97 million, his political organization said.

And Boehner is already getting big checks from across the country.

His Boehner for Speaker committee — which raises money and distributes checks to the NRCC, Friends of John Boehner, Freedom Project and the Ohio Republican Party — routinely accepts tens of thousands of dollars from individuals. In his last filing, Boehner reported $50,000 donations from S. Javaid Anwar, the president of Midland Energy , and Joe W. Craft, an executive with Alliance Coal in Oklahoma. Some Washington figures are coughing up big money, too. Kenneth Kies, the managing director of Federal Policy Group, a boutique lobbying shop, has given Boehner $52,600 this cycle.

Despite a brewing war in Syria, debt concerns and work on immigration legislation, fundraising never stops for lawmakers. Everyone in House leadership has been collecting dollars this summer. Traveling in a bus, Boehner is making stops for members in 15 states across the nation.

It’s efforts like this that Boehner’s team points to as evidence that Boehner is not slowing down and not retiring. He has presided over a tumultuous time in D.C., warring with President Barack Obama over debts, deficits, entitlement spending and what the speaker considers an unruly and far-too-big federal government. The legislative battles will start anew this fall, when Boehner will have to navigate three fiscal fights: government funding in September, the debt ceiling and possibly softening the sequester in October and another government funding battle in December. Immigration legislation is also still lingering.

People involved with the fundraising drive are helping Boehner collect money to help solidify his Republican majority.

“It’s important to keep the House, and we’re working with him and his operation making sure that people have the opportunity to help him out and help the effort to keep the Republican majority,” one Republican familiar with the effort said.